Free The Good Wife by Stewart O’Nan

stands.”
    The house is a dirty cage she paces. She hasn’t been out all day,
and she’s thinking she should just go to the mall and get it over with when she stops to look out at the birds weighting the mulberry tree in the side yard, her breath fogging the windowpane, and she realizes what she can make for them—ornaments.
    Not for Tommy or the kids, but everyone else. She remembers seeing some in Good Housekeeping, Styrofoam snowmen with changeable faces like Mr. Potato Head, a team of matchstick reindeer pulling a sleigh. There’s a craft store at the mall that would have magazines full of ideas.
    She gathers her ChapStick and her purse and takes off before the plan has time to cool. It’s only in the car, after miles of silence, that she doubts herself. She’d have to make them a dozen apiece, and who knows if they’d be any good, she’s never made them before. It’s too late to turn back, and soon she’s caught in mall traffic, a double line stretching up the exit ramp. At least there’s an Arby’s. When she and Tommy picked up their waterbed, they hit it for lunch on the way home, Patty steering for him while he unwrapped his second sandwich. That will be her reward—a Big Beef on an onion roll, sure to upset her stomach.
    The lot at the mall is ridiculous. No one would complain if she took a handicapped spot, but she cruises row to row like everyone else, following people with keys, signaling hopefully. She has to walk a long way (she hates the way she waddles), then rests inside, reading the directory.
    Upstairs, the lady in the Craft Barn who helps her find everything asks, “Boy or girl?” Patty chats with her, and coming down on the escalator she finds herself admiring the oversized tree and humming along with “Good King Wenceslas.” She drops some change in the Salvation Army pot outside—just enough to make her feel part of the pageantry around her. Walking to her car, she shakes her keys at an old guy searching for a spot, and he waves back.
    It’s the middle of the afternoon so there’s no line at the drive-thru.
    “You want Horsey sauce on that?” the woman on the speaker asks.
    “I better not,” Patty says, and when she pulls around, the woman sees her and understands.
    “Take care of yourself,” she says.
    The sandwich is salty and juicy, even better than usual. She hums as she chews, driving along with the sun flooding in the windows.
    The next morning she gets up as soon as she hears Eileen and Cy leave for work. While the water for her Sanka heats, she turns on all the lights in the kitchen, spreads the table with old PennySavers and lays out her materials. The house is quiet. She cuts green and red strips of felt and pins them to a Styrofoam ball with fancy upholstery tacks, then paints on lines of glue, sprinkles glitter over them until the design appears, and finally adds a green pipe cleaner to hang it with before setting it aside to dry. It’s not exactly how it looked in the magazine, but not bad for a first try.
    The next one turns out nicer. She puts on an Eagles album to keep her company and makes another three before switching to spangles. Her fingers are crusty; she has to palm the edge of the record to flip it. There’s a way to make an elephant with a pipe cleaner trunk, cutting the top and bottom of the ball off and using them for ears, but she doesn’t want to risk it yet. She does these easy patterns, getting faster with practice, recycling the spangles until she runs out in the middle of one.
    After the Eagles it’s Dylan, then Neil Young. The finished pile grows; by lunchtime she’s up to a dozen. Which one should she save for Tommy? It can’t have tacks in it—probably not a pipe cleaner either.
    She has to get him something, but they won’t tell her what’s allowed. She’s already tried to bring him a blanket.
    And she still has the kids to shop for.
    She’s hungry but knows there’s nothing in the fridge but baloney and leftovers. She’s out